Merry Christmas, Tom Shone!

My best 'get' was Philip Roth, my interview with whom was suitably terrifying. Surprises included his voice, which turned out to be unexpectedly beautiful — rich, low and sandy, his career as a seducer of women instantly explicable. I was also struck by the speed with which the charm could vanish from his eyes: one minute twinkly and avuncular, the next beady and blackly unimpressed, behind them that brain ticking over, taking you in, taking notes. I was all too aware that he could write me better than I could write him. Even in conversation, I felt like I was in his medium. The one who sang loudest for his supper was Jeff Bridges, whom I caught during the tail end of last year's Oscar campaign and turned out to be one of the most physically affectionate men I've ever met: leaning in, sharing a joke, touching my knee, then my elbow, acting out his stories with gusto. That's my overriding impression: a sand-washed version of a movie star and a big, warm bear-hug of a man. Ben Stiller radiated the matte blandness of many off-duty comedians, the wildness of their act having bled him of lesser extremities, his conversation leached of all judgment, positive, negative, or otherwise. Finding himself in a sentence that would require him to pass judgment on someone or thing, he would stop, back up and start again. I liked him, though, or maybe I just felt his pain: a sensitive, intelligent, talented person negotiating the honeytrap of fame. My least favorite interviewee was probably Bret Easton Ellis who managed to be both dizzyingly defensive and heartbreakingly lost in space. Nothing came out of his mouth that wasn't an outright lie, or something said just to fuck with my head, or contradict something for the sheer hell of it. He spends so much time doubling back on what he thinks your impression of him is, he almost ends up agreeing with himself. I've never met anyone with less sense of who they are — he's completely lost in there, a man turned into his own smokescreen.